The Happiness Machine

I forgot to add something last night. I love Ray Bradbury. His writing is so eloquent and so astonishing. He seems to understand human nature so well, he captures the very essence of our personality and tendency. I wanted to share this passage from Dandelion Wine, one of my favorite novels. This always strikes me, and I have to read it several times to let the full effect sink in. I hope that we can all recognize this.

And then inside the Happiness Machine, Lena Auffmann began to weep.
The inventor's smile faded.
"She's crying," said Naomi.
"She can't be!"
"She is," said Saul.
"She simply can't be crying!" Leo Auffmann, blinking, pressed his ear to the machine. "But...yes...like a baby..."
He could only open the door.
"Wait." There his wife sat, tears rolling down her cheeks. "Let me finish." She cried some more.
Leo Auffmann turned off the machine, stunned.
"Oh, it's the saddest thing in the world!" she wailed. "I feel awful, terrible." She climbed through the door. "First, there was Paris..."
"What's wrong with Paris?"
"I never even THOUGHT of being in Paris in my life. But now you got me thinking: Paris! So suddenly I want to be in Paris and I know I'm not!"
"It's almost as good, this machine."
"No. Sitting in there, I knew. I thought, it's not real!"
"Stop crying, Mama."
She looked at him with great dark wet eyes. "You had me dancing. We haven't danced in twenty years."
"I'll take you dancing tomorrow night!"
"No, no! It's not important, it SHOULDN'T be important. But your machine says it's important! So I believe! It'll be all right, Leo, after I cry some more."
"What else?"
"What else? The machine says, 'You're young.' I'm not. It lies, that Sadness Machine!"
"Sad in what way?"
His wife was quieter now. "Leo, the mistake you made is you forgot some hour, some day, we all got to climb out of that thing and go back to dirty dishes and the beds not made. While you're in that thing, sure, a sunset lasts forever almost, the air smells good, the temperature is fine. All the things you want to last, last. But outside, the children wait on lunch, the clothes need buttons. And then let's be frank, Leo, how long can you LOOK at a sunset? Who WANTS a sunset to last? Who wants perfect temperature? Who wants air smelling good always? So after awhile, who would notice? Better, for a minute or two, a sunset. After that, let's have something else. How could you forget?"
"Did I?"
"Sunsets we always liked because they only happen once and go away."
"But Lena, that's sad."
"No, if the sunset stayed and we got bored, that would be a real sadness. So two things you did you should never have. You made quick things go slow and stay around. You brought things faraway to our backyard where they don't belong, where they just tell you, 'No, you'll never travel, Lena Auffmann, Paris you'll never see! Rome you'll NEVER visit.' But I ALWAYS knew that, so why tell me? Better to forget and make do, Leo, make do, eh?"

Leo tries out the machine and while he's in it, it catches on fire.

Grandpa Spaulding studied the smoke ball in the sky and said, quietly, "Leo, was that it? Your Happiness Machine?"
"Some year," said Leo Auffmann, "I'll figure it and tell you."
Lena Auffmann, standing in the dark now, watched as the fireman ran in and out of the yard; the garage, roaring, settled upon itself.
"Leo," she said, "it won't take a year to figure. Look around. Think. Keep quiet a little bit. Then come and tell me. I'll be in the house, putting books back on shelves, and clothes back in closets, fixing supper, supper's late, look how dark. Come, children, help Mama."

When the firemen and the neighbors were gone, Leo Auffmann was left with Grandfather Spaulding and Douglas and Tom, brooding over the smoldering ruin. He stirred his foot in the wet ashes and slowly said what he had to say.
"The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool. In one hour, I've done a lot of thinking. I thought...Leo Auffmann is blind!...You want to see the REAL Happiness Machine? The one they patented a couple thousand years ago, it still runs, not good all the time, no! but it runs. It's been here all along."
"But the fire-" said Douglas.
"Sure, the fire, the garage! But Lena said, it don't take a year to figure; what burned in the garage don't count!"
They followed him up the front-porch steps.
"Here," whispered Leo Auffmann, "the front window. Quiet, and you'll see it."
Hesitantly, Grandfather, Douglas, and Tom peered through the large windowpane.
And there, in small warm pools of lamplight, you could see what Leo Auffmann wanted you to see. There sat Saul and Marshall, playing chess at the coffee table. In the dining room Rebecca was laying out the silver. Naomi was cutting paper-doll dresses. Ruth was painting water colors. Joseph was running his electric train. Through the kitchen door, Lena Auffmann was sliding a pot roast from the steaming oven. Every hand, every head, every mouth made a big or little motion. You could hear their faraway voices under glass. You could hear someone singing in a high sweet voice. You could smell bread baking, too, and you knew it was real bread that would soon be covered with real butter. Everything was there and it was working.
Grandfather, Douglas, and Tom turned to look at Leo Auffmann, who gazed serenely through the window, the pink light on his cheeks.
"Sure," he murmured. "There it is." And he watched with now-gentle sorrow and now-quick delight, and at last quiet acceptance as all the bits and pieces of this house mixed, stirred, settled, poised, and ran steadily again. "The Happiness Machine," he said. "The Happiness Machine."

It really is amazing, isn't it. I don't want to ruin it with too many words of my own, but I wish we would all appreciate what we have and not go searching for that which we can't have. Love to all. Shalom